The Matt Walsh Show - Thanksgiving Is Not A Sinister Holiday | Proof For Your Liberal Friend

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Every year we are treated to leftists having a total hissy fit over the history of Thanksgiving and this year is no different. Once a year, every year, we give you our best deal of the year. And it’s happening right now. DailyWire+ memberships are 50% off. https://getdwplus.com/blackfridayMATTYT - - - Today's Sponsor: Good Ranchers - Visit https://goodranchers.com and subscribe to any box using code WALSH to claim an additional $100 off your first three orders ($40 off your first, $30 off your second, $30 off your third) + free meat for life. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join now. The Pilgrims overtook the Native Americans and took everything that they had worked so hard for. Well, you know, Thanksgiving is a wonderful time. It's my favorite holiday. It's a time for celebration, gratitude, time to gather around the table with your family, enjoy a wonderful meal,

reflect on all the things that you're thankful for. Unless you are a deranged leftist, in which case you will insist that Thanksgiving is not so simple. There are nuances, as you like to say. Thanksgiving is deeply problematic. And that's why every year, around this time of year, you'll start seeing articles like this one, which was just published in the nation, headline, should America keep celebrating Thanksgiving? Now, the article presents two competing perspectives. Both sides of discussion are put forward, and you have to give the

nation credit at least for giving both sides of the debate. As dumb as you might think the debate is, at least they gave both sides. And, you know, that's honestly more than, I, would expect from this publication. So here's the first argument presented by a guy named Sean Sherman. Quote, the sanitized version of Thanksgiving neglects to mention the violence, land, theft, and subsequent decimation of indigenous populations. Needless to say, this causes tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma of these events to our communities. Thanksgiving's roots are intertwined with colonial aggression. One of the first documented Thanksgivings came in 1637 after the colonists celebrated their massive,

of an entire Pequot village. I do not think we need to end Thanksgiving, but we do need to decolonize it. That means centering the indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday and every other day on the calendar. By reclaiming authentic histories and practices, decolonization seeks to honor indigenous values,

identities, and knowledge. This approach is one of constructive evolution. In decolonizing Thanksgiving, we acknowledge this painful past while reimagining our lives. imagining our lives in a more truthful manner. Now, by the way, in case this wasn't clear, that was the pro- Thanksgiving side of the debate. So they have two sides of the debate.

That's what the pro-sound side sounds like. The Thanksgiving defender is a guy who thinks that the European settlers were evil genocidal colonizers. So if that's what he thinks, here's what the opponent of the holiday has to say. You want to give thanks? Give thanks to Native nations who granted settlers some form of legitimacy by entering into treaties recognizing them to be in our homelands. Those treaties recognize that Americans are now under our spiritual custody and have rights to pass through our country. As soon as Americans were able to impose their will on indigenous nations, the treaties were violated. Some indigenous nations do not have treaties, and legally this means their nations should be intact.

Those of us who have treaties have defensible legal claims to lands that are now occupied by private American settlers under U.S. U.S. law. November is already Native American Heritage Month. Thanksgiving could be something better, a day to appreciate the truth of a Native American history and Native American's contributions to our lives. Let's tell a different story by dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a truth's giving. Yes, let's tell the truth of Thanksgiving, he says. Let's tell the story that no one's ever heard before.

And that's why every year around this time, there are dozens of articles and videos talking about the alleged truth that nobody is allegedly talking about. With the holidays coming up, all those dinners, all those moments around the table with family, I want to make sure every meal is special. That's why I use good ranchers. All their meat is 100% American, raised on local farms delivered right to my door.

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And when you're serving America's best meat, those meals become even more meaningful. It's the kind of quality your family deserves, and the kind they'll be talking about long after the holidays are over. I used to think you could only get a really great steak at, like, an expensive steakhouse. But Good Ranchers delivers that same quality right to my door. Now I can impress family and guests without dropping, you know, $100 every time we eat out. Here's the deal. All new subscribers to any Good Ranchers box using Code Walsh. We'll get an additional $100 off your first three orders, $40 off your first, $30 off your second, $30 off your third, and free meat for life when you subscribe. So hit up Good Ranchers.com this holiday season full of delicious meals. Again, use code Walsh, good ranchers.com. Let's get back to the table. It's true that the traditional story of Thanksgiving, that they used to tell young children,

in school decades ago is simplistic. And there's probably a certain element of legend to it. Every country has its legends. Every country has its foundational myths. There is nothing sinister about that. Stories are passed down through the generations. Details are lost over time. Sometimes details are added.

All to preserve the central theme or message in the story. Every culture has its legends. And really, our understanding of all historical historical events from centuries ago is at the very least incomplete. We don't have camera footage to review, so we can only go by what people involved said happened, or what people who talked to people involved said happened. None of this is revelatory. We all understand this.

Okay, so every time they say, what, did you know, what they told you in second grade about Thanksgiving? Did you know, that wasn't the whole story? Of course it's not the whole story, you idiot. It was in second grade. I assume it wasn't the whole story. None of that changes the basic meaning of Thanksgiving or undermines or debunks the basic central story of Thanksgiving. Besides, the old simplistic story of the holiday has now been replaced with a new simplistic story. In the new simplistic version, the native tribes were all a bunch of peaceful tree-hugging hippies in tune with the earth and nature, singing kumbaya when they were viciously slaughtered by the white men. The Pilgrims overtook the Native Americans and took everything that they had worked so hard for.

The actual truth is that the Native tribes were in a constant state of war, long before any white man set foot on these shores. Violence was an integral part of so-called indigenous culture, all indigenous cultures, because it was not just one culture. Okay, these were disparate tribes stretched out all over the hemisphere, and violence was an integral part of all of them, no exceptions. As for their contact with European settlers, sometimes the contact was peaceful on both sides. On some occasions, the settlers committed atrocities. On some occasions, the Indians committed atrocities. On some occasions, the atrocities on either side were basically unprovoked. On plenty of occasions, there was mutual combat between the two sides.

They don't mention any of this. They never do. They never acknowledge even one of the many, many, many countless instances of Indian tribes inflicting horrific, savage violence on innocent colonists, including women and children, and on each other. They never acknowledge it because they don't want you to realize that this land was not stolen. It was conquered, fair, and square. The previous conquerors of this land were then themselves conquered.

That's the way it goes. By the way, I've got news for you. 400 years ago, almost everybody's life was brutal and tragic. If we're supposed to be sad about misfortune suffered by people we never met way back in the distant past, then we will never stop being sad. Almost everyone everywhere suffered greatly back in those days. There are plenty of people still suffering greatly today. If you want to empathize with people's pain, maybe choose people who are currently living,

not people who had decomposed in the ground 400 years ago. Not people who died 300 years before the automobile was invented. Now, in final analysis, history contains an essentially, infinite amount of suffering and atrocities and outrages and injustices. It also contains heroism and sacrifice and courage and achievement. It is up to us to decide which of those things in our national history we will focus on. I contend that the healthiest category to focus on, the thing that you focus on if you want to be a thriving and happy and healthy society, is the latter.

Which isn't to say that we outright deny and never discuss the former. the former, of course we acknowledge that bad things were done in our history. We shouldn't try to erase that from the history books, and nobody is. But ultimately, you will look back on your history with pride and gratitude or with resentment and despair. You will focus on the triumph or the tragedy. The people of all other nations across the world, or at least the non-Western world, they choose to focus on the triumph of their ancestors, which breeds national pride and patriotism and gratitude. In the modern West, we are the only ones who have decided to basically ignore all of the positive and concentrate almost exclusively on the bad. So much so that even our day

of Thanksgiving has become, at least in some corners, times of mourning. And what has that strategy gotten us? It's only made us resentful, sullen, depressed, ungrateful. It has made just worse people and our country a worse country. That's why I will not partake in this historical self-flagellation. Instead, I celebrate the incredible valor and intrepidness of my ancestors. I take pride in this country's history and those who made it possible for this country to exist in the first place. I am happy that they came here and that they conquered.

I am thankful for their conquest. I will give thanks for it on Thanksgiving and for so much else. And for everybody else, I will say they are today canceled.